Who Gains from Restructuring the Post‐Soviet Transition Economies,and Why?

To explore the mixed economic results and huge distributional changes experienced by post‐Soviet economies, I set up a series of theoretical and numerical simulation models using an approach based upon heterogeneous firms, where ‘reform’ means closure of inefficient capacity. In the presence of significant costs to new firm entry and international capital mobility, restructuring and privatisation can lead to falls in GDP and real wages, while capital is transferred abroad. This situation can occur even under perfect competition, but is worse when industrial production is concentrated and trade costs are high. By contrast, workers can gain when costs of establishing new firms are low, and/or when the inefficient industries are capital‐intensive. For countries with high costs of firm set‐up and of trade, capital controls may be justified to protect wages.     

Why Do Resource-Abundant Economies Grow More Slowly?

This article suggests an alternative explanation for why resource-rich economies have lower growth rates: because they are likely to be living beyond their means. It is shown that overshooting the steady state's equilibrium consumption and investment can be optimal in a Ramsey growth model with natural resources. Therefore, the economy will converge to its steady state from above, displaying negative growth rates on the transition. A dynamic general equilibrium model is calibrated to the Venezuelan economy and shown to approximate the economy's performance over the oil boom years adequately.     

Stabilisation, Policy Targets and Unemployment in Imperfectly Competitive Economies

This paper argues that the rate of equilibrium unemployment depends on the objectives of the Central Bank. In a model where the Central Bank uses monetary policy to stabilise the economy, we show that unemployment and inflation will be lower with an inflation target than with targets for output, money or nominal GDP. The intuition for this is that the elasticities of demand in both the product and the labour markets are greater when there is an inflation target; we show that this leads to a lower mark-up of price over marginal cost and makes wages more sensitive to unemployment.     

工人离职、失业波动与失业保险文献评述

失业不仅涉及失业波动的影响,还包括在职工人的离队。为减少工人搜寻过程中产生的负外部性,应降低工人的信息成本。失业保险政策的实施又降低了失业工人再就业的激励性,应确立有效的失业保险水平,实现产出与社会福利的最大化。     

How Will EMU Affect Inflation and Unemployment in Europe?

This paper explores how European Monetary Union will change the wage setting behavior of national labor unions. We derive the impact of national inflation aversion and labor militancy on the performance of national labor markets under different monetary arrangements. A common central bank raises inflation and unemployment if it acts as conservatively as national central banks. However, unemployment falls in countries that previously tied their monetary policy to the Bundesbank. We also examine the composition of EMU and the influence of national labor market legislation.
JEL Classification : E 24; F 02; F 33     

Unemployment and Economic Integration for Developing Countries

While financial or trade integration between countries may increase the size of the market and aid the adoption of more advanced technologies, will it also increase the level of urban unemployment for a developing country? In this model, there is unemployment in the urban sector. Manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose increasing returns technologies to maximize profits. Financial firms provide capital to manufacturing firms and they also engage in oligopolistic competition. We show that an increase in the wage rate in the manufacturing sector changes neither the level of technology nor the level of employment in the manufacturing sector. While financial or trade integration between developing countries leads manufacturing firms to adopt more advanced technologies, the level and rate of employment in the manufacturing sector will not deteriorate.     

我国结构性失业的类型与对策

结构性失业逐渐成为我国失业问题的主要方面,研究结构性失业的类型有助于更好地解决我国的失业问题。我国结构性失业大体可以分为市场型结构性失业、制度型结构性失业和观念型结构性失业,前者又分为供给滞后型结构性失业、需求变动型结构性失业和机制不灵型结构性失业。根据不同的结构性失业类型,应采用有针对性的解决对策。     

Flexible and Committed Profit Sharing with Wage Bargaining: Implications for Equilibrium Unemployment

We analyze the relationship between profit sharing, employee effort, wage formation and unemployment under different relative timings of the wage and profit sharing decisions. The optimal profit share under commitment exceeds that under flexibility, because through a profit share commitment the firm can induce wage moderation. The negotiated profit sharing depends positively on the bargaining power of trade union and it has both effort-enhancing and wage-moderating effects. Higher profit sharing is shown to reduce equilibrium unemployment under ``sufficiently rigid' labor market institutions, but it can harm employment when labor market ``rigidities' are ``small enough'.     

Unemployment Shocks and Income Distribution: How did the Nordic Countries Fare during their Crises?

We study the inequality of disposable income in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s when unemployment rose dramatically in all four countries. A standard measure of inequality — the Gini coefficient – was surprisingly stable in all countries during this period. By decomposing the Gini into income components, we test hypotheses about the reasons for this stable income distribution. Our most straightforward hypothesis, that rising unemployment benefits counteracted the impact of more unequally distributed earnings, receives only limited support. More complex mechanisms seem to have been at work.
JEL classification: D 30; D 31; J 60     

Estimating Savings and Growth Functions in Developing Economies: A Simultaneous Equations Approach

There is a two-way influence between the savings rate on the one hand and some of its determinants on the other (i.e. a problem of simultaneity exists). This study specifies a general production function to generate a growth rate function, and estimates savings and growth equations simultaneously. A Hausman specification test examines the correct system specification, and determines whether 2SLS or 3SLS is the appropriate estimation technique. The results show that a simultaneous equations model is a better estimation technique (2SLS or 3SLS) than a single equation system (OLS), and that the full-information method (3SLS) provides better estimates than a limited-information method (2SLS). [C30]     

技术进步、经济增长与失业:新古典熊彼特主义经济理论的新进展

Aghion和Howitt把熊彼特主义的"创造性破坏"模型与劳动力市场搜寻匹配理论结合起来建立了一个分析经济增长与失业关系的框架.在该框架中,经济增长存在着加重失业的"创造性破坏"效应和缓解失业的资本化效应.一些学者在此框架基础上讨论了劳动力市场不完全情况下经济增长与失业的关系以及就业政策对经济增长和失业相互关系的影响."创造性破坏"的框架,把技术进步作为切入点,为认识增长与失业的相互关系提供了一个全新的分析视角.     

A Note on Modelling Money Demand in Growing Economies

A prominent feature of US data is the lack of cointegration between nominal interest rates and M1 velocity. Yet, most general‐equilibrium monetary models that have been used for empirical analysis have imposed cointegration between these two series. This paper presents as an alternative a money‐in‐the‐utility function model which does not imply cointegration even though a well‐defined stationary monetary equilibrium exists.     

浅析中国失业现状及其解决对策

近来,由于受金融危机的影响,中国的就业状况面临严峻考验.为此,应采取积极有效措施提高劳动者就业能力,转变就业观念,优化产业结构,完善社会保障制度,扩大内需,以推动就业,消减失业影响.     

Remittances,Dutch Disease,and Manufacturing Growth in Developing Economies

Remittances have grown tremendously in magnitude and economic importance in the past four decades, providing economies with additional disposable incomes and even serving as buffers against economic downturns. It is thus but fitting to ask how remittances have impacted on growth, particularly on manufacturing growth. This note presents a simple model linking remittances and manufacturing growth via a ‘Dutch Disease’ channel. Using Blundell and Bond's (1998) system general method of moments on a panel dataset of 56 developing economies from 1992 to 2016, we verify that remittances adversely affect manufacturing growth in economies that experience high real appreciation rates. This result is robust to alternate specifications, such as the inclusion of financial development indicators, the expansion of the sample to include high‐income economies, and the use of different sample periods.     

Unemployment Durations in West Germany Before and After the Reform of the Unemployment Compensation System during the 1980s

Abstract. This paper analyzes empirically the distribution of unemployment durations in West Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. It therefore covers periods before and after the changes during the mid‐1980s in the maximum entitlement periods for unemployment benefits for older unemployed. The analysis is based on the IAB employment subsample containing administrative data for about 500,000 individuals. Since these data only partly reveal the unemployment duration in an economic sense, we use a narrow and a wide proxy for unemployment. Our empirical analysis finds significant changes in the distribution of non‐employment durations for older unemployed. At the same time, the distribution of unemployment durations between jobs remained unchanged after the reforms. Our findings clearly show that many firms and workers used the more beneficial laws as a part of early retirement packages. Surprisingly, for those workers who found and accepted a new job, we do not observe a prolongation of their search periods to a sizeable extent.     

Optimal Environmental Policy Differentials in Open Economies under Emissions Constraints

Is there a case for preferential treatment of the exposed sector in an economy when compliance to an aggregate emissions constraint induced by an international environmental agreement is mandatory? This question is being debated in many countries in the context of the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. We address the issue in a general equilibrium framework and theoretically cover several market structures, including perfect competition, the large country case and oligopoly. We identify the conditions under which preferential treatment of the exposed sector is not warranted from the point of view of maximizing social welfare. In addition, we demonstrate that in the case of oligopoly, instituting a more stringent environmental policy on the exposed sector might be profit-enhancing for this sector. This finding lends theoretical support to a specific interpretation of the Porter hypothesis.     

A Note on Investment Incentives in the WTO and the Transition Economies

Most of the transition economies are already members of or in the process of accession to the WTO. Therefore their investment incentive regimes need to be compatible with the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures in the WTO. This study compares the fiscal investment incentives in the transition economies provided to foreign investors and shows which are expected to be phased out soon owing to their inconsistency with the current WTO regulations. It would be to their own benefit for these economies to make their investment policies consistent with the relevant WTO provisions, to take steps to eliminate subsidies prohibited in the WTO system and to try not to waste their resources, considering that the incentives may be subjected to countervailing measures by WTO members.     

Profit Sharing,Credit Market Imperfections and Equilibrium Unemployment*

We investigate the interaction between labour and credit market imperfections for equilibrium unemployment in the presence of profit sharing. In a partial equilibrium with exogenous outside options, increased bargaining power of banks has adverse employment effects. In a general equilibrium with endogenous outside options, this relationship is frequently reversed; reduced credit market imperfections increase equilibrium unemployment if the labour market imperfections—measured by the bargaining power of trade unions—are sufficiently strong and the benefit–replacement ratio is sufficiently high. Finally, we show that higher bankruptcy risks increase equilibrium unemployment under similar conditions.